Five hours a week chasing invoices — the agent we'd build for a law firm

A 20-person law firm in French-speaking Switzerland. An audit conversation last week. The same observation we see in half our audits: each partner spends roughly five hours a week chasing unpaid invoices and handling the client replies that follow.

Here is what we would build — not in theory, in practice.

The current workflow (manual)

1. Once a week, the assistant pulls the list of invoices > 30 days from the accounting software.
2. For each one, the partner involved drafts a personalised email — measured tone, context of the matter, wording tailored to the client.
3. The client often replies (excuse, request for delay, dispute), and the partner has to handle the response.
4. At 60 days, escalation: formal demand letter, sometimes litigation.

The cost is not the drafting time — it is the context switch: a partner stepping out of a hearing to draft a follow-up loses the focus they just built.

The agent

Three steps, simple:

1. Read the AR ledger. Every morning at 7 am, the agent reads invoices that are more than 30 days past due. For each one, it checks: amount, age, client payment history, associated matter.

2. Draft the message. The agent drafts a follow-up email in the firm's tone (we calibrate the tone with 20 past email examples). It picks the wording based on: invoice age, client history, matter type. The draft lands in the relevant partner's inbox, not the client's.

3. Human approval, then send. Each morning the partner receives a list of 3–5 drafts. For each: Send, Edit, or Defer. One click. The message goes from the partner's address. For the client, nothing changes — it is the partner writing.

What it gives back

Based on a 20-person firm with 4 partners:

• ~5 hours/week recovered per partner on drafting and follow-up.
• Faster collection: reminders go out at 9 am on day 30+, not the following Friday at 5 pm.
• No damage to client relationships: the human always has the final say.

What it does not do

• The agent never decides to send a formal demand letter. For matters > 60 days, it flags — it does not act.
• It does not handle disputes: if a client replies with a legal question, the partner responds.
• It does not score the client. It drafts and proposes; the decision stays human.

Cost and timeline

An agent like this can be prototyped in 2 weeks and deployed to production in 4–6 weeks with guardrails, monitoring, and a feedback loop. The ROI holds in 3–4 months on this scope.

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A free 30-minute audit is enough to check whether a workflow like this exists in your business — and whether the agent is worth it for you specifically.